Come siamo diventati populisti: la lingua politica italiana della «terza Repubblica»

Abstract

Vulgar, dishonest, incompetent: in recent years Italian politicians and their speeches have been described as such by journalists, linguists and political scientists. The turning point seems to date back to the three-year period from 2007 to 2009, when the political landscape in Italy appears to have taken on the most vivid colours of populism. These years saw the emergence of political movements and forces very different from each other, but which had some common characteristics: direct appeal to the people, intolerance for parliamentary representation rules, and a close relationship between supporters and a charismatic leader. In this paper the author wonders whether this representation of political communication reflects real new features or if it is rather the result of some longer processes in the history of Italian politics and its language. To answer this question, the author proposes a synthetic profile of political language in Italy over the last 10–15 years and focuses on its evolution and current trends, using written or transcribed texts and a corpus of parliamentary speeches from the last legislatures.